Vida e Caffé for International Design Indaba
In 2006 REX collaborated with the international Design Indaba to celebrate the success of Vida e Caffé. This South African coffee caffé franchise, has enjoyed instant success and serves as a case study for how to create a ‘cult following’ through genius branding.
Creative professionals and designers from within the Design Indaba fraternity, were asked to design a limited edition coffee cup sleeve for the annual Design Indaba event held in Cape Town, each year.
In our interpretation of the theme (Home Grown & High-End) we decided to focus on instigating a process, rather than designing a final result directly. Using only the logo, the brand colours, and the brand name – REX went looking for what new meaning could be generated from these elements. We felt that the approach of depriving ourselves of ‘foreign subject matter’ and using only the ‘given brand elements’ would be apt commentary on the chosen theme, as it highlights the ability African designers have to do so much with so little!
This left us with a white canvas and red logo type. The design solution was developed by feeding the letters from the logo type into an on-line anagram generator. Incongruent variations of the words ‘Vida e Caffé’ were output from the word processor until we spotted the words ‘fed via face’. This was exactly the kind of happy accident we were hoping for! This made new essential interaction with the brand possible and the rest of the solution is pretty much self-evident. The aim was never to de-face, but rather to use the bare minimum of the existing brand and to lend new expression to it.
